Name: Curried Fowl or Chicken
Ingredients: 1½ oz (about 3 tablespoons) curry powder; 2 onions, sliced; 1½ oz (3 tablespoons) butter; 1 pint stock; 1 fowl, prepared and cut into pieces; salt to taste; a little lemon juice; boiled rice for serving

Why it works: Onion and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,433 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Curried Fowl or Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Melt the butter in a clean stewpan and add the sliced onions. Cook until they are soft.
Add the pieces of fowl and lightly fry them.
Stir in the flour until well mixed.
Add the curry powder and season with salt.
Gradually stir in the stock and simmer until the fowl is cooked through.
Place a colander over a basin and pour the stewpan contents into it.
Return the shaped pieces of fowl to the stewpan and strain the sauce over them.
Add a little lemon juice, warm up, and serve with boiled rice.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,433 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,366 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together42,912 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Butter + ricetop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,645 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).